Which do you think is better British or American tv ?

[inej]

Why i ask is because most of the programmes i like are american, Er, friends ,supernatural. I do like Eastenders and teachers was good . What do you prefer ? thanks

[electricblue]

supernatural-american
Lost-american
Surface-american
eastenders,corrie,emmerdale,the bill,-english
Home and Away-australian,

[electricblue]

oh and ,Shortland street-new zealand

[wolf63]

Stargate Atlantis and Stargate, NCIS, CSI NY and CSI and the Simpsons. What more can a girl ask for?

[Kay]

UK... Corrie, Emmerdale and EE,
US..Medium and Supernatural..Jensen Heckles..Phwarrrrr.

[jake-the-peg]

Generally I just can't stomach American programs. I've tried a number of times to watch a complete episode of friends but each time I get to 5-10 minutes before wanting to throw something at the set

Then Mrs. Jake made me watch My Name is Earl which just has to be one of the funniest and cleverest shows from the US or UK.

I won't say I'm a convert to American television but they've got a reprieve in my mind.

PS "I don't know why they go on about asbestos, it tastes OK to me"

[maxi29]

I love American sitcoms (Frasier, Seinfeld, Larry Sanders and best of all, Bilko) so much that I was prepared to put with puke-fests like Friends. And American drama series tend to be much better too - you could put an infinite number of British scriptwriters in a room and they wouldn't come up with something as good as The Sopranos.

...that's until I went to the US and discovered that 99% of American TV is utter dreck and that we just get the best of it. And we don't have to put up with ads every couple of minutes either.

[Backdrifter]

Friends is getting a raw deal here - yes it can get schmaltzy but that's not all it is. The first few seasons in particular were full of witty scripting and some terrific performances. Even most of the schmaltzy bits are usually immediately balanced by a sucker punch of some kind. It did out-stay its welcome, it should have ended long before it did but it's misleading to dismiss it as a puke-fest or to continually condemn it as the uncool one next to Seinfeld and Sanders (both of which I absolutely love, esp. Sanders).

To answer the question: undoubtedly, in my mind, British. Yes there's some great US stuff out there and I love some of it but as maxi29 said, we get the very cream of the richest pickings. Bar a few rare examples US telly is absolutely shackled by its terror of the tyrannical networks, creating a bland unadventurous TV landscape consisting almost entirely of middle-ground. And PEPPERED with adverts. Tragically, some of the UK networks - E4 in particular - are starting to mimic the US habit of throwing in adverts straight after the opening titles. We used to get 2 ad breaks per hour - now we get 4 or 5, and I hate it.

British TV has almost always been the trailblazer, with the US hanging on to its coat-tails. Quatermass, The Wednesday Play, Til Death, Steptoe, the Dennis Potter plays, Horizon, costume drama, Edge of Darkness, The Singing Detective, Cracker, State of Play... no US network could have come up with anything remotely like any of those but they've copied some of them and countless others. Sometimes when I despair of British TV - and I regularly do - I have to remind myself it's still better than everywhere else.

[Cobra2]

American. Most English stuff is crap. There arent many classics like in the past like Only fools and Horses and Porridge

[spaced]

err, The Office, Spaced?? They're British

[Backdrifter]

That's right spaced, plus the US had to copy The Office... and I agree no US network could ever come up with anything like Spaced - the best they can do is My Name Is Earl and Scrubs - "ooh look how whacky we are" stuff.

Cobra, as maxi29 said if you actually go to the states and watch TV there you realise the stuff we see is about 0.05% of the absolute cream of the crop - the rest of it is mind-numbing crap.

It's easy to focus on the rubbish we get on British TV but there's lots of good stuff

[NJOK]

This might be controversial but in general, with the exception of a few shows, I find that women seem to prefer US imports and men prefer British TV. Or is that just me?

[WoWo]

For me I find American shows too throw away, fine if you want to waste 30 minutes but not classic television.

I think this is beacuse of the way American shows are produced, they tend to use teams of writers where as in the UK it's individuals or pairs of writers.

As some people have pointed out we tend to get the good stuff here as most of it isn't worth exporting in the first place.

The one thing that does bug me about American TV is the fantasy element. Compare CSI for example with Waking the dead, in CSI the smallest hair can be taken back to the lab and they can get a full DNA profile in about 10 minutes, in Waking the dead it takes a week and isn't conclusive. The later is much closer to reality, and don't even get me started on the computer software they use.....

[Backdrifter]

Also, I know things like Lost are very popular but I find them infuriating - they have these ludicrous 24-week seasons so they have to spread everything as thinly as possible. Plot details that would be taken care of in one episode of a BBC drama are dragged out and stretched over a month or two in something like Lost. When Invasion started they showed the 1st 3 episodes in one go. By the end of the 3 eps, NOTHING had happened - the plot had advanced less than half an inch. Compare that with, say, the BBC series Life On Mars, which had all manner of comedy, drama and incident packed into just six episodes. This is one aspect in which British TV scores highly over the US stuff.

[Drusilla1S]

I'm quite happy living in England and watching the best of American imports. I would hate to live with American Tv all the time as the amount of dross is unbelievable and the ad breaks are never ending on some US channels.

However, I don't see British television producing programmes as good as CSI-Las Vegas; Law and Order, Special Victims Unit; The Sopranos; Deadwood (Even the Americans cannot afford to keep that running as it costs millions per episode.) and House. I also adore Curb Your Enthusiasm which I feel is a far superior version of 'embarrassment comedy' than The Office.

Would the Americans even think of serialising a classic like Bleak House, though? I doubt it!

[Simeon]

I think they both have their place and are both as good in different ways.
As for copies, the American copy of the Office is way on par with the British version but has anyone ever seen the American version of Cracker, it was hideous and I think if any American who is reading this and has seen both versions will agree

[Backdrifter]

Drusilla you make some good points but people make way too much of those CSI programmes, they're well-made but astonishingly overrated in the UK. Ditto Law & Order and especially House, about which I'm mystified by all the praise for both it and Laurie. Most seasons of Waking The Dead are at the very least as good as any of those CSI programmes and with much better character interplay.

In one of my earlier posts here I listed some prime UK drama, including some very recent stuff, the like of which I've never seen American TV produce. And the UK ones keep it punchier by sticking with short seasons. One of the very few 24-episode US dramas that worked really well was Murder One, a superb show, at least in its first season, which benefited from the long-season format.

We used to routinely do excellent, superior documentaries but alas we have - I'm sorry to say - gone down the US road by producing bland, overproduced American-style ones drenched in annoying music. I must agree that Ricky Gervais does not wear his Larry David influences lightly, does he?!

[robbo82]

I watch more comedy than anything else on TV really, and for years American shows were far better- Cheers, Frasier, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, etc. However, over the last 5-10 years, British comedy has excelled itself with gems like The Office, Extras, Peep Show, I'm Alan Partridge, Marion and Geoff, Brass Eye. However, America continues to churn out the likes of Family Guy, Scrubs and Curb your Enthusiasm, so I think the US just edges it, although Britain is slowly catching up.